Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Causing harm, ruin, or death; harmful.
- adjective Portending harm; ominous.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Destructive; pernicious; poisonous: as, “baneful wrath,”
- “baneful hemlock,”
- Synonyms Hurtful, harmful, mischievous, deadly.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Having poisonous qualities; deadly; destructive; injurious; noxious; pernicious.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Exceedingly
harmful ; causing harm, death, ruin. - adjective Deadly or
sinister . - adjective Portending
disaster . - adjective archaic Poisonous.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective deadly or sinister
- adjective exceedingly harmful
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Yesterday, Agricola made me read an article in a newspaper, in which violent blame and bitter irony are by turns employed, to attack what they call the baneful tendencies of some of the lower orders, to improve themselves, to write, to read the poets, and sometimes to make verses.
The Wandering Jew — Complete Eug��ne Sue 1830
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Yesterday, Agricola made me read an article in a newspaper, in which violent blame and bitter irony are by turns employed, to attack what they call the baneful tendencies of some of the lower orders, to improve themselves, to write, to read the poets, and sometimes to make verses.
The Wandering Jew — Volume 07 Eug��ne Sue 1830
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That man Clarke has some kind of baneful influence over her.
The Tyranny of the Dark Hamlin Garland 1900
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Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth, as indolence.
A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010
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Many of the founders welcomed the economic crisis because it would force Americans to abandon the luxuries that Thomas Jefferson called a “more baneful evil than toryism was during the war.”
A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010
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Yes it would be a baneful herald of the apocalypse for children to read the dictionary of all things.
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Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.
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My upbringing instilled in me all-pervasive fear — the sense that most everything in life (especially pleasure and taking chances) was baneful; that good existed only in the afterlife; that people, places, and things were never to be trusted.
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When looking at the nation's debt, the situation is even more baneful.
Michael Pento: Rising Rates Reveal Debt Reality Michael Pento 2011
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While there are some things about the "postmodern" critique of culture with which I agree, one of its most baneful conseqeunces is the way in which it has swept up what was postmodern fiction into its smothering arms and blocked our view of what this fiction is really like.
Postmodernism 2010
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